win entered Christ's College in Cambridge to become a clergyman. To Darwin a good education meant instruction in the methods and logic of thought. Therefore, Just about the only thing he enjoyed studying there was Paley's works on theology, because of their logic. For the rest, however, he judged Cambridge to be just as much a waste of time as Edinburgh and Shrewsbury. Nevertheless, in his spare time at Cambridge, Darwin became interested in various scientific endeavors, and became acquainted with and influenced by the scientific ideas of Henslow, Sedgwick, and Whewell (ironically Sedgwick later became a bitter opponent of Darwin's theory). In addition, during his last year at Cambridge Darwin read two books which influenced him greatly, Herschel's Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, and Von Humboldt's Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent. Darwin later confessed that these books inspired in him "a burning zeal to add even the most humble contribution to the noble structure of Natural Science".In 1831 Darwin graduated from Cambridge, and as he was pondering his future he received a proposal to join a scientific expedition that would survey the southern coast of Tierra del Fuego. Darwin accepted the proposal, and sailed from England aboard the famed Beagle on December 27, 1831. His job was to collect and catalogue new species so that they could be sent back for further research in England. It is commonly thought that Darwin used the voyage to test his theory of evolution, but this is highly unlikely. At the time Darwin's interests were purely geological as can be seen by his correspondence with his sister. For instance, writing about the fossils that he discovered he said, "All the interest which I individually feel about these fossils is their connection with the geology of the Pampas". Furthermore, Darwin himself confessed that he could not have appreciated the significa...
